Team Development: Finding Great Reviewers

Many people have asked me how I find my great construction document coordination reviewers. Some have tried and found out that this is an extremely difficult process.

The answer, though, is incredibly simple… find people who can think, people who are inquisitive and willing to spend the time to track down something that is puzzling them.

Well… I guess it really isn’t quite as simple as that. There are people who can think that still won’t make good reviewers.

Sometimes ambitious, intelligent people do not work out for a variety of reasons. In some cases, they can’t help but try to fix the discrepancy they’ve found. And this is not what we do… we are not on the design team and do not have access to all of the information needed to make those kind of decisions, we only have the drawings and the specs to work with. Suggesting fixes also may expose us to needless liability while not really helping the client.

Other folks are just inherently too forgiving… they really don’t want to find errors in the construction documents. So they have a tendency to either not see the errors or to see them and think “Oh… I can guess what the designer meant… so I won’t red-mark this issue.”

It’s quite a challenge to find people who can pay attention to detail, but not get so bogged down in the details and errors that they take too long to perform a review… or perhaps even worse, they can’t see big picture patterns or issues.

Not only that, reviewers must be aware of their work habits/patterns and plan their time accordingly to meet deadlines… and know themselves well enough to know when they have worked enough. Since we are in the quality assurance business, it’s embarrassing when we make silly mistakes… which happens much more frequently if we are pushed, stressed, or tired.

And then to top it all off, all our reviewers have to be team players and get along (trust, respect, etc.) with each other. Since one person doesn’t review an entire project, the people involved must work closely together.

Author: Natalie Nigro

Employee Relations: Working with the entire human, emotions and all

Archaic employee relations and retention strategies, especially those related to manufacturing or production models, attempt to downplay the humanness of their crew, they try to view the employee as a number or an asset. And in truth, when it comes to the assets of a company, the people are a great asset, but no matter what you do, you cannot remove the humanness from the human.

You can try, but you cannot turn your team members into predictable, emotionless robots. It is an impossible task and the more you try, the more resistant your team will be. When you hire someone or work with them on a team, you are also working with their:

• Spouses, family and friends, if relations are bad with their loved ones it effects work performance and the ability to concentrate.
• Health status, though some rarely get sick, some battle ongoing health challenges or others suffer from self induced ailments, they have to be dealt with either way.
• Finances, if they are facing bankruptcy, foreclosure or are just having a hard time making ends meet, it may occupy their thoughts continually, even while they are supposed to be working.
• Attitudes, beliefs and relationship/communications skills. Everyone brings along their own life instruction book and this effects how they treat/view other people and how they handle problems.

OK, since all this "humanness" effects work performance and therefore profit, what do you do about it?

What you can do may depend on the type of company you have, whether you are small family company, a government entity, a partnership and so on. Here at the Nigro Firm, we don't really have employees, everyone chooses to work with the group as an independent contractor, so we are a really unique situation. Which also means we are not confined by strict corporate standards, we are more like a group of individually owned companies that choose to work together, we are all autonomous, this includes everyone, our IT guy, our writer, our reviewers, our cartoonist and so on. Believe it or not, this has worked really well for us. So in this "cooperation" how do we compensate for the humanness in each other?

• Flexible schedules. The office is available 24/7, so if someone wakes up on the wrong side of the bed or has to deal with a family emergency they can always come in later. This also accommodates our early birds and the night owls, some may arrive at work at 7 am and others don't leave till 3 am.
• The ability to work at home. Everyone is allowed to work at home if possible. Though many come in to use the large tables that make looking at the drawings easier, or some just pop in from time to time to just socialize or "catch up."
  
• We share information. Many of the people here share health tips, fresh veggies from their garden, recipes and more to help support each others health.
• Sickies stay at home. What is worse than someone spreading their illness around the office? Often when we are not feeling 100% we can still work or some companies don't allow much time off so people come to work sick, they may be "troopers" but they are also potentially making other people sick.
• Financial Advice. Since everyone in the office essentially runs their own company, they share tax tips and so on. Natalie is also willing to offer advice on running your own company.
• Stress reducing tools. All subs have available for their use a gym, an indoor pool and a nap room as well as the beagles, Wilbee and Izzy, who are great stress and blood pressure reducers.
• Snacks and drinks. Low blood sugar or forgotten lunches can lead to crabbiness and fatigue, so the office is stocked with soda, water, candy, nuts, salty snacks and a full kitchen is available for those that want to cook.
• Open and supportive yet defined work atmosphere. We are open to working with all types of people, we do not have dress codes and so on, but we do have strict and known guidelines about deadlines and quality of work. So we do not micro manage,this empowers our subs and gives them the opportunity to take control of their own work, so they don't feel put upon or helpless like they may feel inside of some large companies.

These things have worked for us. And when occasionally someone has created a situation where they interfere with others work or the project in general, we will step in. But otherwise we empower our team members to take control of their work, performance and schedules. We also provide our very human subs with all of the tools they need to run their own company, perform their work, meet deadlines and de-stress if needed.

Author: Pamela S. Stevens

Stress Managment in the Workplace: What to do when you can't stop thinking about work

Everyone has had those days or even weeks when they can't stop thinking about work. If you just can't seem to shake off thinking about work, you are likely experiencing work related stress.

When I am in the middle of reviewing a big project I start reviewing or editing everything. As a construction document coordination reviewer, I look at construction drawings all day, and when I notice that I am doing the following, I know it is time to take a stress break:

• I can't read anything without looking for errors, it amazes me how many books have spelling and grammar errors.
• I look at buildings and wonder if what I am seeing was in the plans and if it is what the architect had in mind. This distracts me from when I am trying to have a good time by going out to dinner or watching a movie.
• I see areas or parts of a building that look like they would be difficult to figure out by the plans.
• When I see a huge building or stadium in a movie and think about how glad I am that I did not have to review the plans for that building. Like the building in Oceans 13, I would have had an aneurysm if I had to check that structurally.
• I check my nephews homework and make corrections using review abbreviations, such as CNL for Could Not Locate or AVW for At Variance With.

When I start applying work to everyday situations, I know I need stress break. If I have time between projects I like to go camping, hiking or just get away, sometimes it may even take me two or three days to get work out of my brain. But often I don't have time for an extensive get away so I have to find other ways to de-stress. And often a five minute mini break can recharge me and deter an hour of low production. You surely have your own way of unwinding, but here are some of the ways that I spend my five minute mini breaks:

• Talk to a friend
• Get on the elliptical
• Go for a short walk
• Pet the dogs

Generally, physical exercise works best for me, it helps me get some of my pent up energy out and it clears my head so I can easily handle more hours of intense reviewing. So next time you find yourself staring off into space or if you just can't stop thinking about work, take a break, whether it is a week or five minutes it will do you good.

Author: Nikki Whiting, Reviewer

Leadership Style: Humans are imperfect, even us

The other day, Natalie and I were going over our web pages making changes and discovered that we had missed making one of our logos an active link to the index page. This was surprising because that was something that was obvious and we had clearly missed it! At that moment, I once again realized what a huge undertaking it must be to design and produce plans for a commercial building. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it would be to work on an elementary school, office building, hospital, a huge prestigious resort, not to mention a stadium that would cost in excess of a billion dollars.

Over the past weeks, working on our own web sites and blog, we have made errors. Yes, we were inconsistent and left things out that we needed.

Not surprisingly, I have concluded that we are not perfect. When I say we, I mean we humans. Although, we may try to be correct, meticulous or stay focused, we still make mistakes. So when you make a mistake (and you will) who has your back?

When we at the Nigro Firm poke fun at the errors made on construction documents, we are not poking fun at any single architect or at architects in general, but are embracing and enjoying our shared imperfect humanness.

And if I know one thing, it is that imperfect humans need other imperfect humans to survive and prosper in life and at work, to watch each others backs and to catch each other when we fall.

How you go about surviving your imperfectness is up to you, but we like to take the happiest route possible...which is together.

Author: Shirley Nigro

Team Development: Creating a healthy, trusting and productive team

Who do you want to spend 8-12 hours a day with?

You cannot always pick who you work with, but what if you could? Who would you want to work with?

A healthy team requires many of the same attributes as a healthy friendship. Good friends care about each other's well being, enjoy each other's success, are helpful and supportive, they are honest and desire to work through things patiently to help the relationship last through many challenges. Don't those qualities sound like they can also facilitate productive teamwork, cooperation, creative problem solving and personal accountability?

In reality, we spend more time with our coworkers than we do with our family, partner or friends, so wouldn't you want to spend your waking hours with people that you actually get along with? That is what team building is all about, either you create a team of people that are cooperative and supportive of each other or you work with an existing team and try to help them learn to be cooperative and supportive.

Believe it or not, a good team has lots to do with trust, for example, in terms of my team I trust that they:

• will complete their assignments
• will get their work done on time
• will ask me for help or clarification if they need it
• are supportive of me reaching my or the companies' goals
• will try to do the best job they are capable of
  
• will not take on more work than they can complete
• will provide me with a consistent product or service
• will act in the best interest of the company
• desire to produce quality/ accurate work

Think about it, if you can really believe the above about your team, your stress level will likely drop in half. How much time do you spend worrying about what someone else is doing or if they are going to make you or your company look bad?

If you can create a solid team that treats each other with respect like best friends would, you can enjoy a powerful, formidable team that knows how to utilize the talents and trust of the group to move proverbial mountains.

Author: Pamela S. Stevens

Creative Problem Solving: Meeting Deadlines

Snow can be fun....but not when you are snowed in and FedEx cannot make it through....and your project is due!

This happened to us recently, snow was piling up fast and FedEX called to say they couldn't make it through and our project needed to be shipped out that day.

And we have never missed a deadline.

We looked out the window, our trucks were covered with a foot of snow and the streets were unplowed. We called the client and related our situation, and being understanding people, they said, don't worry about it, just ship it when the roads are cleared. We felt a little better, but we have never missed a deadline, EVER. Giving up is not like us, so we put our heads together for a little creative problem solving.

In fact, we have always told anyone who works with us that all projects must be completed on time…no excuses…if they died they still have to turn in their work on time. Now this. In over 17 years we had never been late and I was not happy thinking that now would be our first time.

Then we thought about one of our reviewers who lives close to the office...who has a big Jeep with huge nubby tires....perhaps? We called him up and the first thing out of my mouth wasn't hello or how ya doing but, "can you get to FedEx in your beautiful big jeep?" and he said "sure" he was more than happy to help. He dug his trusty Jeep out and used it's four wheel drive power to make it to the office. He then rescued the bundle of drawings and delivered them to the nearest FedEx office.

Whew, so thanks to our amazing reviewer, we still have never missed a deadline!

Author: Pamela S. Stevens

Leadership Style: When one of your team members make a mistake

OK, this one was me, I did it. And I should have known better, I do know better, I am an editor and an educated writer, and I screwed up.

Recently we mailed out our first newsletter, hard print by snail mail, and I typed in this blog address incorrectly, and I didn't catch the error and nobody else did either.

So what do you do when one of your team members makes a mistake? And it is a good one.

Of course, I was just stunned, I couldn't believe I did that. But there it was bright as day. My client was standing behind me when I realized and she realized my error. Of course I apologized, then we moved on to laughing about it, too late now right? And I am sure she won't let me forget it and tease me about it for as long as it's funny.

After this incident we talked about this topic. What is the best way to deal with a team member that makes a mistake? Here are some ideas we came up with:

• Accept it. Everyone makes mistakes. However, you may want to reconsider the relationship if they make the kind of mistakes you can't live with.
• Choose progressive thinking team members. No mistake should occur twice, choose team members that are capable of improving themselves and are conscious of their importance on the team.
• Work with people you can trust. Good team members try to do a good job and if they make a mistake you know that they didn't do it on purpose or because they do not care.
• Find solutions. If it is the kind of error that you think could happen again, put your heads together and figure out the best way to prevent the same kind of problem in the future.
• Don't freak out. If you overreact you may foster a situation where your team members will be nervous about fessing up or they will be afraid of you. If this happens and they are anxious all day - nothing gets done. On the other hand, if you anger yourself you are also impeding your own production.

Our solution: For now on we are going to check all web and email addresses, even if we think it is right. Better safe than sorry.

Author: Pamela S. Stevens

Pets at Work: Sadness Hits the Nigro Firm

If you know anything about the Nigro Firm, you know that we love our pets. We have two sweet beagles in the office and many of the people that work here in the office have pets at home or even dogs that they bring into work.

However, most often we outlive our beloved companions, and it is so sad to see them leave us, but we cannot keep them with us forever, no matter what we do. Recently, one of our associate's aged pointers (Bow) suffered a debilitating stroke and had to be put to sleep.

That was a very sad day at the Nigro Firm office. By some miracle, the dog, ever conscious of his owners needs and feelings, died the day after a project was due. Who knows how this happened, but it is true. Ever considerate, he died when he knew his owner would have the time to grieve his loss.

Bye bye Bow, we will miss you.

Author: Pamela S. Stevens

Time Management: How to know when your team is working too many hours

Sometimes our reviewers take on tons of work and work many hours to meet their deadlines, which we greatly appreciate. But how do you know if your team is working too much?

Often an overworked team will display signs of stress, such as short tempers, mistakes in routine tasks, fatigue and impatience.

However, every team is unique and may display it's own unique side effects of working too many hours. Our team is no exception, please have fun with us and read our top ten list.

Top 10 Signs that the Nigro Firm Team is Working Too Much

10. Extra toothbrushes and other toiletries appear in the guest bath. We have a guest room for our team members that work late and don't want to drive home or for when one our team members gets stranded by a bad snow storm.

9. Both refrigerators are full of food, all three meals. We have two refrigerators at the office and when they are full of everything from eggs and bacon to steaks for the grill, we know that our team members have basically moved in and spend more time at the office than at home.

8. The dogs are working overtime. We have two beagles who work in the office as stress reducers and morale boosters and when they are working all of the time, the team is working around the clock as well. However, they are usually much better at taking exercise breaks and naps than the other team members.

7. Supplies dwindle. When everything from toilet paper to Diet Pepsi is running low and we have to make extra trips to Costco to resupply, we know our team is working a lot (and eating way too many M&M's).

6. The SEO consultant is cooking. When our SEO consultant walks into a room of hungry, scowling faces, she knows just what to do - feed them. Often when people are working tons of hours the first thing that goes out the window is healthy eating, so she will cook the team a home cooked meal.

5. Everything is funny. When our team is tired they laugh a lot and at very trivial and seemingly unfunny things. But since laughter is a great stress reducer, why not?

4. They can no longer speak English. When your team members start to refer to the bathroom as the room with the water and start calling Mountain Dew, Dr. Dew, you know they need a break.

3. They dream about architectural drawings. Remember that old Windows screen saver with the repeating, growing pipes? One of our team members actually dreamed that all night after checking plumbing drawings.

2. The Rangpur Gin is gone. When our supply of gin is gone or the scotch is getting low, we know the stress is high and people are settling in for the night...or celebrating?

1. A team member becomes spontaneously illiterate. This really happened, after days and days of checking drawings one of our reviewers walked into the room and said, "I can't check drawings anymore, I am illiterate."

Author: Pamela S. Stevens (SEO consultant and team cook)

Time Management: Construction project management

One way to save time is to start with good, clean construction drawings before groundbreaking.

Think about it- how much time do you spend submitting RFI's? How long does it take to deal with one change order? Or ten? Or 100? Do your jobs often involve lots of rework? Is your crew sitting around too much? You get the picture, document errors can be costly and they use up a lot of valuable time.

One of the projects we reviewed recently was to be built in a rather prestigious community and there were severe limits as to when actual construction could be occurring… and there was a strict deadline by which the project had to be complete (or there’d be kids sitting out on the street instead of in school!).

So not only did the project have to be completed on time, but strict noise ordinances limited the available construction hours.

This is a perfect scenario to benefit from a coordination review. Things can’t be fixed just by pushing more work hours in each day… it’s not an option. In this case, the project has to run smoothly according to its schedule. So every little bit helps and if we can can help you limit your RFI's and change orders, it may make the difference between you meeting or not meeting your completion date.

Author: Natalie Nigro

Featured Construction Project: Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD)

The Nigro Firm, Inc. participated in the construction drawing review process of the nearly $400 million Los Angeles Police Dept Headquarters structure.

New LAPD HQ will be High Tech and Community Friendly

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the City of Los Angeles, Department of Public Works - Bureau of Engineering finalized the plans for the new LAPD headquarters and broke ground in January 2007. The designs for the new facility were created by DMJM Design with Roth + Sheppard Architects. After an extensive public review process, that included over 30 community meetings, the City of Los Angeles approved a design that balances the communities’ need for a functional, high tech building that also reflects a sense of community and openness.

The 500,000 sq. ft. building, that will occupy nearly an entire block across from City Hall in downtown Los Angeles, will replace the circa 1955 HQ LA PD HQbuilding and will include many high tech upgrades. Chief Barton stated, “This new police facility will bring us into the 21st Century. As society and advancements in technology change so to must we as a police department. This state of the art facility will enable us to do just that.”

The Nigro Firm, Inc. participated in the construction drawing review process of the nearly $400 million structure that involved two extensive cycles of reviews. The multi-functional, 10 story structure will feature not only police administration and investigative operation areas but also a police commission hearing room, a conference center, a state of the art Compstat Command Center, a 450 seat auditorium and generous public spaces.

In response to the City of Los Angeles’ goal of sustainable building practices, several green building elements will be incorporated into the building and upon completion a LEED Certified rating from the US Green Building Council is anticipated. The construction is scheduled to be completed by September 2008, with the parking structure completed by late 2009.

Interested in what other projects we have worked on? See, Projects.

A New Nigro Firm Site: Blueprint Bluepers

BlueprintBluepers.com by far is the funnest site we have worked on thus far. Which it should be, because it is intended to be all about fun.

Blueprint Bluepers went up fast, in less than three days we had the site complete, though it took years to collect the construction humor that was used to create the content of the site. We also had to find a graphic designer to create the original cartoons and utilized our SEO consultant to help with the content.

This site features our original construction cartoons as well as construction humor and funny stories. Blueprint Bluepers is our most popular site and attracts visitors from all over the world.


Blueprint Bluepers was created to not only entertain but also to show a bit of the Nigro Firm humor. We enjoy our work and have a good time reviewing construction documents, but sometimes we just need a good laugh, and often drawing errors are a good source of amusement. Quite often when we find an error we imagine what it would be like if the contractor actually built it that way, what would the building look like? How would it be used? Our imagination tends to run wild and that is how we come up with our cartoon ideas.

This site, like our newsletter site Beagle Review, will grow as we create more cartoons and discover new interesting errors to share with our visitors.

Author: Pamela S. Stevens

Effective Leadership: What if your team makes a mistake?

Take a breath and don't hit the panic button in front of your clients when you think one of your team members may have made a mistake.

At a recent debrief, I almost had a freak-attack! Notice, I said almost.

Here is what happened during a recent debrief - one of the project managers spoke aloud wondering if my coordination review had caught a particular issue that they learned about after sending me the drawings. Oh boy! I started to sweat! Did we catch that particular coordination error? I hope so, I hope so, I hope so!

Let me explain a little about how we do reviews… one person doesn’t review a whole project. It would just take too long and said person could quite likely go insane. So, we create a team of reviewers to take care of a specific area or discipline and the team lead looks over the final reviewed documents and debriefs the project, if a debrief is desired by the client. But the team lead hasn’t memorized every discrepancy… and uses the marked-up drawings to refresh their memories during the debrief.

So, at that moment, I had absolutely no idea if we had caught the coordination discrepancy or not!

It turned out that my teammate had found the discrepancy… much to my relief. But what if they didn't?

Of course, even if we did miss something, it’s not the end of the world even if it is embarrassing. After all, reviewers are human beings too, and can make mistakes. (So we like to make our comments soft and sweet, because we might have to eat them later on!)

It’s not a problem that mistakes are made, mistakes will always be made, but the focus should be on attempting to prevent them in the future. Ideally, the same mistake is never repeated twice and if the proper quality measures and routines are put into place, reoccurring mistakes should be minimal.

So basically, take a breath, get over it and move on!

Author: Natalie Nigro, President

The Nigro Firm, Inc Web Site

Nigrofirm.com was the first site we launched for our company. We did everything ourselves, from the coding to creating our own logo. We also hired an SEO specialist to help create original content and took our own photographs so we could include unique images instead of stock photography. In addition, all of the building renderings are from projects that we actually worked on. We did all of these things so we could stand out from the crowd by having unique content and a look and feel that is much different than our competitors sites.

Our industry presents some unique challenges, for one, rarely are our services searched for through search engines. This is because not many people know construction document coordination review services exist and if they do know they exist - they don't know what to call them. Some people call them coordination reviews, others constructibility reviews, or redicheck reviews, or cross checks or some just refer to them as construction document reviews. So playing the search engine game is challenging. That is why we created our construction humor site and our newsletters, to help people know we exist, to educate them about our services and to share with them our personalties and our perspectives on the construction industry.

The Nigro Firm web site was a challenge to create. We learned tons about coding and web site building in a very short period of time. In regards to the specifics we used freecsstemplates.org for our template, which we altered quite a bit, and used CS3's version of DreamWeaver as our html editor.

Please check out our other sites, Blueprint Bluepers and Beagle Review.

Author: Pamela S. Stevens

How clients respond to criticism

When it comes to telling your clients that they may have made a mistake, your imagination is likely worse than reality.

In our line of work, often owners or other interested parties are a bit apprehensive about how the design team is going to handle criticism. Many people think that the design team (architects and engineers), who receive review comments regarding their work, will be defensive or unhappy. In my experience, this could not be farther from the truth! In almost all cases where I have gone to a debrief (in a debrief I walk the design team through the reviewed drawings and point out critical coordination discrepancies and omissions) the design team was appreciative and anxious to get working on the fixes.

In short, debriefs in our case and perhaps relating client mistakes in yours, are generally accepted much better than what you might expect. Most attendees of our debriefs are quite impressed by the thoroughness and attention to detail in our coordination review. The design team is so pleased that someone was able to put in the huge amount of time required to do an in-depth coordination review that they could not afford to do themselves. Not only that, but it becomes clear that unbiased, third party’s eyes can catch things that are “invisible” to the creators of the construction documents. In regards to their own work, most people have a tendency to see things as they intended them, but not necessarily as they are actually drawn. I know that I have that problem and I don’t feel comfortable with publishing anything that has not been proofread by someone else first!

To think about it in another way, by pointing out their mistakes, you are helping them with their job, which will be appreciated. Because if you did not catch the error, someone else will and likely at a more critical moment, or it will be their boss or their client who sees their mistake. Most people want to do a good job and I have found that mistakes in contract documents are not due to a lack of caring by the design team. They want clean documents… and any tool that will help them achieve that is very welcome.

I look forward to debriefs because they are generally very friendly, positive, cooperative affairs… where everyone has the same goal… to make the construction process as smooth and painless as possible.

On the few occasions when a debrief attendee has been somewhat resistant to the review and debrief process, they generally come around by the end and are very pleased and impressed. Part of this "coming around" has to do with me doing my job. I do not point out errors without doing my homework and if I am not sure about the discrepancy then I tell them I am not sure about it, so they can clarify it for me, but I at least address the concern. It is about trying to communicate to them that you care about the quality of their work and that you are on their team to help them be as productive, profitable or look as good as possible.

Author: Natalie Nigro, President

Why We Started this Blog

Nigro Firm, Inc. is a construction document coordination review service. Or more simply put - we proofread construction documents and specs for errors, omissions and inconsistencies. We love our work, but as you can imagine it can be stressful at times.

We have had many positive and challenging experiences through the years in regards to customer and employee relations. We realize that when we work with someone we are not working with a robot but a real, 100% human being with needs, wants and shortcomings. Nobody is perfect (even us) and we cannot do everything ourselves, so our goal is to figure out how to make the work place a supportive yet productive environment for everyone, from the owners to the subcontractors to the clients. This blog is a way for us to share with you some of the things we have learned and continue to learn, that may be helpful to you and your team.

Is your team ready to pull off your next big deal? Is everyone enjoying working together in a trusting and productive environment? We believe if your team can achieve these things they can conquer anything!

So please read and enjoy. And if you happen to need a construction document coordination review, we are easy to find, just visit the Nigro Firm website.

Author: Pamela S. Stevens